Ishmael Annobil

Ishmael Annobil is a London-based poet, filmmaker, journalist, digital composer, and the founder of Stonedog Productions. He has directed four keynote art documentaries, including Linda Karshan: Choreographing the Page, Hornsleth: Product of Love, Kenji Yoshida: Artist of the Soul; and In the Presence of Awe: The Transvangarde, and one fiction, the surreal Salamander Walks. His forthcoming fictional films include Icarus, and Drosophila, a psychological thriller. Born in Accra, Ghana, in 1958, Ishmael started writing poetry at the age of 11, and entered journalism soon after high school. He has lived in Sudan and Kenya, where he performed his acclaimed poetry show, Criers on the Thresholds of Reality, for the homeless. He came to London, in 1983, as an arts, economics and politics correspondent., and subsequently moved with his family to Wales, where he subsequently founded the poetry festival, Iolo's Children, and Wales' first serious arts journal, Circa21 Newspaper. A master photographer, and pioneer of important low-light techniques, Ishmael's photography has also been published in prominent publications, including The Independent Newspaper, and the prestigious French magazine M3. Recently anthologised in Another English (The Poetry Foundation, America), Ishmael has published two books of poetry namely Seven Horn Elegy and Ethiop, and one music album, Zingliwu. He is also the founder/editor of the online international art and design journal Chiaroscuro Magazine (www.chiaroscuromagazine.com). Ishmael attended Christian Methodist Secondary School (Ghana), studied Social Anthropology extramurally at Goldsmith's College, London, and undertook a PgDip in Visual Communications at West Herts College.